Busy days

I've been very lax about updating my blog, life has been just too busy to keep up with everything. We are finally out of our little heat wave, we saw our hottest temperatures of the summer this past weekend. As much as my garden needs the heat and sunshine, I am SO glad that we are seeing a cool down.

This time of year means lots of canning and preserving for the coming year. This week I've worked on green beans and apple pie filling. This is the first year I've tried apple pie filling, I'm really excited about it! I've wanted to try and have a few "ready made" items in my pantry for when I just don't have time to make everything from scratch. This way, I get the best of both worlds...made from scratch and a time saver! What could be better? Gotta love it! I also froze 12 pies worth of strawberry rhubarb pie filling. All I have to do is add the tapioca and put it into the pie shell....simple! We can have a slice of summer any time of the year. Yum!

Today, Brandon takes his final drive for driver's ed class. I'm glad it's finally here. He can't get his license until after Thanksgiving, but at least we are going to be done with this phase. :) I've got errands to run in town today too, so it will be a busy day for us. It's never enjoyable for me to be away from home all day, I try to group as many errands into the day I HAVE to be in town as I can so I don't have to do it as often. We'll see if we get it all done today. :) Once we get home, we'll set to work at preparing the boys bedroom for our oldest to be home for a bit from the Marines!! :) So excited!! I have no idea how long he'll be here, but we want him to have a place to feel at home while he is here. It will be so nice to have him home again...we've really missed him!

Planning for the coming school year has also been heavy on my mind. Planning our days during the school year is tough sometimes, this year will be extra busy....but we are excited! :) The mapping out of our days will start later this week. One of my stops today is to look at ready made planners. I've tried printing ones up on line, and I just haven't found what I really want. With all that we have on our plates this year, I need one that "fits" what we are going to be doing.

On the homestead front, we added a new buck to our goat herd. He's a Nigerian Dwarf buck named Honor. He's such a sweetie! We also moved our meat birds out into the tractor yesterday. I'm praying they survived the night...we had a stray cat trying to find his way into the tractor last night. My hubby thinks that it's secure, but I still worry. It would be a HUGE bummer if we lost all 25 of them now! This weekend we'll be working on expanding our pasture, stringing hot wire and getting the power hooked up in the barn for the charger. I am SO excited! One step closer to getting our cow. Yay! :)